Assessment of the Economic Burden of Diabetes Management to Households in Denkyembour District, Eastern Region, Ghana

Abstract

Introduction: The cost of diabetes care continues to rise with its associated toil on patients and their households due to its chronicity and complications which need continuous management. This puts serious economic burden to households, nations and the world at large; and therefore cannot be underestimated. Evidence based knowledge in this subject, is therefore of essence to help inform policies and programmes for diabetes management and cost containment. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the economic burden of diabetes management to households in Denkyembour District, Eastern Region. Method: Descriptive cross sectional study design was used to assess the economic burden of diabetes to households in Denkyembour District, Eastern Region. The study employed quantitative approach for the data collection. Systematic sampling technique was used to select 224 diabetes patients from the sampling frame of 986 diabetes patients. Closed ended questionnaires were used to collect the data. The data was entered into Microsoft excel and STATA Version 15 for analysis. The data was then summarized into frequencies, means, proportions, standard deviation. Ethical Approval: Ethical approval was sought from Ghana Health Service Ethical Review Committee; and approved. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 56 years with the modal age of 45 – 54 years. One hundred and thirty five (135) of the 224 respondents were employed. The average monthly income of the earning diabetics was GHS 377.76 (USD 80.55). The overall total cost estimate for diabetes treatment was GHS 49,175.17 (USD 10,485.11) with the total mean cost of GHC 219.53 (USD 46.81). The estimated direct cost constitutes the bulk of the total treatment cost with a cost profile of 82.2% while indirect cost constituting 17.8%. In the ascending order scale of one (1) to five (5), the degree of physical pain and psychological pain were rated 2.15 and 2.73 respectively. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that the estimated total treatment cost and intangible cost of diabetes pose considerable economic burden as patients spend close to 60% of their monthly earnings on diabetes management. This reduces their household income significantly.

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MPH.

Keywords

Diabetes Management, Denkyembour District

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